THE ROCK AHEAD FOR GLADSTONIANS. T HE Member for South Carnarvonshire,
Mr. John Bryn Roberts, seems to understand the most dangerous reef now ahead of the Gladstonians better than any other Member of the Welsh party. That rock is the impatience of each of the separate cliques of which Mr. Gladstone's party is composed, to receive some tangible proof of the power and fidelity of the Government. Mr. Bryn Roberts is convinced himself, and is anxious to per- suade his fellow-Welshmen, of the serious character of this danger. But as yet he has not apparently succeeded in infecting them with his own very sagacious and well- founded fears. The main point, he declares, to keep in view, is the necessity of securing a, majority at the next General Election. If that fails, not only does the Govern- ment disappear, but the Irish question remains unsolved to encumber the Gladstonian march for the future. If that succeeds, the House of Lords will give way, Home-rule will pass, and then this Government can pro- ceed to the next great reform to which it is committed, which must be, as Mr. Bryn Roberts at least does not doubt, the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales. But what is the use, he asks, of passing a Welsh Disestablishment measure through the House of Com- mons which the House of Lords would of course reject, if the effect of this policy were not to promote but to injure the popularity of the Government with the constituencies at the next General Election. That popularity is the really important question for the Welsh Disestablishers, not the futile provision of another victim for the House of Lords to immolate. If the Welsh Bill passed the House of Commons next Session, and then the Gladstonions were beaten at the polls, the whole achievement of the two years would lie nil. The Irish Party would have been mortified and probably alienated from their British allies by their ill- success. The Irish block would be in stay, quo, and the Welsh would be as far from having achieved what they desire, as they ever have been. Every step taken would have to be retrodden, and retrodden under the dis- coura,gement of a great and recent failure. Nothing, says Mr. Bryn Roberts, is more urgently needed than patience and self-restraint. If by pressing on too fast, failure on the one important point of all is rendered more likely, Disestablishment in Wit!es may be postponed indeliuitely. The Conservatives certainly will not propose it, and as for the hope of a return of the Gladstonians to power after six years, even if they should secure that return, the con- ditions of the campaign might be wholly altered by that time. Nothing could be more headstrong and imprudent than to sacrifice any hope of victory at the General Elec- tion for the idle glory of passing through the House of Commons a futile Bill which would go no further, and might greatly excite and alarm those who would have the power of preventing a victory at the polls. Mr. Bryn Roberts, therefore, urges the Welsh Gladstonians, in the letter published in Thursday's Times, to devote themselves to passing Bills like the Registration Bill for shortening the residence requisite to confer the franchise, which the House of Lords might possibly pass, or the rejection of which might irritate the people against the House of Lords, and to keep the more sensational policy of Welsh Disestablishment for the Government which should come in with the prestige of a successful Irish policy, endorsed by the people, behind it.
We must say that this advice of Mr. Bryn Roberts's, though we do not think it at all likely to be followed, seems to us, from his point of view, very shrewd and rational, But it has found no favour at present with his Welsh colleagues, and we shall be very much surprised if it finds favour with them in the future. The most signi- ficant note of the enthusiasts of the Gladstonian Party is their impatience and their jealousy of each other. Mr. Gladstone has succeeded, —and a remarkable feat it is,—in controlling that impatience only by the very unfortunate, and, as regards time, the very expensive, device of introducing and advancing by a stage or two a number of Bills of which nothing more can be heard in the present Session. Those futile Bills have been of the nature of earnest-money or deposits given as guarantees of serious intention, and without them we do not believe that Mr. Gladstone could possibly have kept his majority together as long as he has. But the moment that his own special p; otegi; has been sent up to the Lords, the various cliques who were massed together under Ilia leadership will think that they have sacrificed enough to their respect for him, and will begin to clamour,—as the Welshmen and the miners have already begun to clamour vehemently,—for the second place. The Irishmen, too, will be exceedingly wroth, if their cause is to be shelved for a whole year after the House of Lords has rejected their Bill, and they are thereby relegated to the tender mercies of some leader who may think much less of them than Mr. Glad- stone. Sir Wilfrid Lawson has intimated what he would think of an indefinite postponement of the Veto Bill ; and in spite of the very ambiguous signs from Scotland as to the popularity of Disestablishment in, that country, the Scotch Disestablishers are not at all likely to hold their tongues if they are again disappointed, after moving heaven and earth to force Mr. Gladstone's hand on that subject. Even before the autumn Session begins, and still more loudly before the summonses go out for the meeting of Parliament next year, we shall have the most discordant cries going up as to what the programme of the next cam paign is to be, and the angriest possible criticism by the disappointed on the favour shown to their more successful rivals. The new democracy are not patient. They are, on the contrary, both eager and suspicious. The self- restraint which Mr. Bryn Roberts so sagaciously advo- cates is not in them. He himself betrays this by declaring for both a very drastic plan of Disendowmeut, and a local application of the sums which arise out of Disendowment to the most pressing wants of the separate Welsh counties thus disembarrassed of their Church. That means that his own constituents are eager for the spoils, and eager to have the spoils distributed where they can perceive and feel personally the advantage they have gained. Now, constituencies with ardours of that kind are very rarely indeed disposed to be patient. They want to taste, feel, and handle the prizes for which they are taught to con- tend, and they think nothing of a prize that is to be awarded, like a deferred annuity, on some distant and problematic occasion which may never arise. This is what the Welsh colleagues of Mr. Bryn Roberts have dis- covered, and that is why they have not listened to his sagacious, but too unpalatable, advice. it is just the same with Mr. Keir Hardie, with Mr. Burns, with Sir Wilfrid Lawson, with Mr. Wrightson, with all the leaders of all the democratic sections. They cannot bear to wait in- definitely. They have already waited more than a year, and are getting impatient for results. The self-restraint which is pressed upon them is altogether inconsistent with the passion fostered in them for the purpose of winning the General Election, which they did contrive to win. And now they seem to themselves to have almost won it in vain.
We regard Mr. Bryn Roberts as a much shrewder Welsh politician than those who are doing their best to hound Mr. Gladstone on into a premature attack on the Welsh Church. Mr. Bryn Roberts is aware that it is necessary first to catch your hare before you can kill and cook it ; and in this case, in order to catch the hare, the next General Election must be won for Mr. Gladstone, which will be no easy matter. Mr. Roberts represents, too, that rather minute party of Welsh Disestablishers which has the self- restraint to deny itself an immediate vindictive pleasure for the sake of a greater probability of ultimate success. But he will not succeed in drawing-off the premature Welsh attack on the Establishment which will set all England aflame with new alarms, and make the General Election far more hopeless for the Gladstonians than it would be if the Welsh Members had the self- interested foresight of Mr. Bryn Roberts. But the very genius of the new democratic movement is not only selfish, but impatient. The Welsh farmers hunger and thirst for the attack on tithes which they have so long been planning. If Mr. Gladstone is compelled by age or in- firmities to retire from public life, they see how much they would stand to lose. The aegis of his ecclesiastical mind is in their view, and very possibly as a matter of fact, indispensable to the success of the campaign they are planning, and every month almost renders the prospect of retaining that aegis for their purpose less and less probable. They want to be led to the battle by him, and they will not listen to Mr. Bryn Roberts's shrewd, but also risky, counsels. If Mr. Gladstone were ten years younger, it would be a different thing ; but even then the feverish Celtic blood would hardly brook delay. Mr. Bryn Roberts was perhaps, for his purpose, hardly prudent in referring to the danger of a too generous Disendowment scheme, and the desirability of a local distribution of the plunder. Those allusions were of a nature to make Welsh mouths water for a taste of the spoil. We believe that the Government will not run the risk of snubbing the eager Welsh demand. They will probably in the next Session hurl their forces against the National Church, rouse all the Conservative instincts of Englishmen, and determine the crusade on which they have entered in a sense un- favourable to themselves. The truth is that the Glad- stonians have a very difficult choice to make. If they were prudent, they would probably lose the prestige of Mr. Gladstone's leadership against the Church. If they are imprudent, they will bring all the prestige of the Church's influence against Mr. Gladstone at the next General Election. Whether prudent or imprudent, they will fail.
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